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info post đź“–
age. 34
birthday. pffbt
sexuality. bi
marital status. single
occupation. librarian/archivist
current location. Paragon Station
build. guy who's never exercised
hair. dark blonde
eyes. brown
father. Frederick Lucien Montmorency
sibling. Elder brother, Lucien;
Step-sisters, Nina & Eugenie;
Younger brothers, Augustine & Leopold
other. n/a
family tree. here
Unfortunately for him, the rest of his siblings keep getting way too involved in political drama and kidnappings and attempted assassinations, really wrecking his chances at living a peaceful and quiet life in his little archive.
- IMPULSIVE / GRUDGE-HOLDING / RUTHLESS
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Havemercy is a good person burdened with the weight of his family's various corruptions. If he could have his way he would live a quiet life without having to be mixed up in politics at any time, although even after abdicating rights to his family's rulership, he continues to get mixed up in it. Havemercy's loyalty to his family is motivated by love and vengeance, as he believes his stepmother is the source of every family problem. He choose to ignore the way this obsession has corrupted his own behavior, because how could his mistakes be worse when she is so horrendous? She probably killed his mother! He's justified!
So the family situation is bad. Havemercy keeps tabs on his family and people around him, leaning into hyper-vigilance when it comes to his siblings, convinced that his stepmother cares only for Leopold, the youngest, and is willing to murder her way through the rest of them for the sake of Leopold's future as ruler. This extends to anyone close to him; the people around him get weaved into his net of obsessive watchful attention, out of fear of losing someone again.
But sometimes Havemercy isn't on his obsessive path. He's made himself a niche on the station as the archivist and also an information broker for those others who come and go, and his library employees are his own cherished family. He's kind and generous and fiercely protective of all of them, in part due a subconscious need to keep someone safe, after what's happened to his biological family over the years.
He prefers to maintain a persona of a regular, casual guy, who doesn't have fingers in every pie and definitely wouldn't arrange a hit on anyone who threatened his family or employees. It sometimes works; given the open secret nature of his status as the information broker, people do know he's not as careless and lazy as he chooses to appear, but it still manages to take some off guard. In his day-to-day he does his best to keep it casual and lighthearted, although it's not hard to clue in that he's keenly paying attention to everything (and everyone) around; he collects information and studies people out of habit and paranoia. Not to say that he can't be lighthearted for real, or that he's constantly behind a smokescreen, but it comes and goes. He's pretty easy to rope into a scheme as a result, although he's very aware of his limitations, mostly physical.
The fact that he wants to live a quiet life isn't disingenuous, he's simply in the process of arranging all the pieces so he can relax for real one of these days. Clearly nothing is his own fault, and he harbors no guilt for anything at all.
He does, though; he harbors an obscene amount of guilt, all stemming from a botched assassination attempt on his own stepmother in his youth. He missed, and his attempt to poison her instead found Augustine, his younger brother; hasty intervention stopped Augustine from dying but left him prone to illness and physically feeble, and though Havemercy's hand in the affair has never been discovered, he has been actively and subconsciously trying to make up for it ever since. Unfortunately these methods of his contradict: he wants to live quietly, uninvolved in dirty business, but he continues to deal in secrets; he wants to protect Augustine and Leopold from their mother, but he wants to keep his distance to avoid another mistake. Even in his daily life he pretends he's average, not skilled at any one thing, such that even he will one day believe he's incapable of doing big things. What happened to Augustine haunts Havemercy; he's ruined and his soul is a tar pit, but he won't back down now.
Ultimately, Havemercy is a man who lives in his own head. He did one big thing years ago and it hangs heavy around his neck, forcing him to overthink and avoid and not progress at all. He is the sole bulwark against the treachery of his stepmother, a position he assigned himself, and he lives suspended in guilt and half-measures after royally screwing up the first time he really tried to make a meaningful change.
When idle he tends to fidget with his hair and can't seem to pick one position to sit in without grumbling and moving a few minutes later; a whole lot of slouching involved. The energy he gives off is very "I'll get to it eventually," regardless of how hard he happens to be working at a given thing.
In her honor, Havemercy attempts a religious lifestyle in the Temple of Ianke, which means he spends a lot less time with his family during his father's immediate remarriage to the Lady Duchemin. While he does not spend all of his time as an acolyte in the Temple, there are long stretches of time when he hits his teen years (up to a year and some few months) that he doesn't interact with the family beyond very brief visits. He misses his older brother Lucien's abdication and subsequent exit of the station, and the tween years of his younger brothers, Augustine and Leopold. He also doesn't get to know his new stepsisters (Nina and Eugenie) very well, but they're... cordial.
Unfortunately, an accidental uncovering of evidence points the finger at his stepmother for his mother's sudden illness and death. Havemercy, still devoted to his late mother, resolves to kill his stepmother during one of her visits to the moon, after much deliberation and stewing. There is a Temple there, so he arranges quite cunningly to poison her, and thus rid his family of the tumor he believes has ruined them. Unfortunately again, he misses: Augustine takes the poison and nearly dies; this will leave him weaker and prone to illness for life, and Havemercy is immediately crushed by guilt.
He quits the Temple under an excuse rather than admit his crime, and spends a few years bouncing around between interests and careers. None of them quite take; he visits Lucien for a while, he lives a very floaty and noncommittal lifestyle, which inevitably leads to his father politely asking him to give up his claim to the station. Havemercy agrees; Augustine is made primary heir. Unlike Lucien, who simply abdicated, Havemercy goes as far as possible and renounces his family name entirely; he becomes Havemercy with no surname, and no claims. He is 25 when this happens.
After that, he doesn't want to leave the station because his stepmother is still around and causing problems, so he lingers. He's not very good at any one job still, until he finds himself in charge of the station's archives/library, which isn't his passion or anything, but it's easy enough to maintain well. Somewhere along the way he becomes a sort of information broker for visitors to the station and its open secret of a shady underbelly. He has no intentions of telling his brother what he's done, but when someone tries to kill Leopold and then he winds up kidnapped, the "my evil stepmother?" butter begins to churn once more.